Saturday, November 9, 2013

In a setback for gun-control advocates, a state appeals court has barred enforcement of a California law that would require all purchases of ammunition "principally for use" in handguns to be made in person rather than by mail order or on the Internet.

The law, which has been blocked by court orders since 2011, would require buyers of ammunition to be thumb-printed and sellers to keep records of the transactions.

Most types of ammunition are not limited to handguns, but can be used in rifles and other firearms, the Fifth District Court of Appeal said in a 2-1 ruling Wednesday. As a result, the court said, those affected by the law would not have fair notice of whether it applies to their transactions and when they might be at risk of prosecution.

Neither the law nor testimony by experts and gun dealers has provided "a common understanding or objective meaning of the term 'handgun ammunition,' " said Justice Gene Gomes in the majority opinion. The law's vague wording could lead to inconsistent and unpredictable enforcement, he said, and could make compliance difficult or impossible for mail-order and Internet ammunition sellers.

So, the law was overturned because the wording was too vague, not because there's anything wrong with the substance of it. In the fullness of time, it'll come back.

William Petty, 24, of La Crosse was convicted by a jury July 26 of shooting a man in the neck.Madison dot com

Listen, if you're gonna shoot someone by accident, don't be a convicted felon, don't be a heroin dealer, don't try to destroy evidence and above all, don't be black. Otherwise, you might have to pay for your negligence like this guy.

The State Police in Remsen investigated an accidental shooting. 20 year-old, Marc T. Donahue from Rome accidentally shot himself in the leg when hunting in a wooded area located off Furman Road in the town of Boonville.

Donahue was attempting to attach his .308 rifle to a rope in order to hoist it up to a tree stand. The rope hung approximately six feet off the ground, and when Donahue reached up and started to attach the rifle to the rope, one round was discharged into his left femur. The rifle was loaded with four rounds and did not have the safety on at the time of the accident. Donahue was transported by Mercy Flight to Upstate Medical treatment where he is in stable condition.

Are 20-year-olds allowed to handle guns unsupervised in New York State? This one proved to be incapable of safely doing so, don't you think?

Friday, November 8, 2013

It seems like there's one thing you can't do if you're the editor of Guns & Ammo magazine: run a column endorsing gun control.

That's what Jim Bequette found out this week. On Thursday, he announced that he was resigning immediately from the helm of the gun-friendly title after readers revolted over an article by contributing editor Dick Metcalf which ran in the magazine's latest issue.

"Way too many gun owners still believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement," Metcalf wrote. "The fact is that all Constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be."

Cue outraged readers. "Guns and ammo for gun control? Unsubscribed!!!!! Fire Mr. Metcalf," one wrote on the site's Facebook page.

In response, Bequette told readers he had made a huge mistake, had fired Metcalf and would be resigning right away:

I made a mistake by publishing the column. I thought it would generate a healthy exchange of ideas on gun rights. I miscalculated, pure and simple. I was wrong, and I ask your forgiveness.

Plans were already in place for a new editor to take the reins of "Guns & Ammo" on January 1. However, these recent events have convinced me that I should advance that schedule immediately.

You see, gun-rights fanatics, like the subscribers of Guns and Ammo, don't care for the truth. They want to live in a black-and-white fantasy world where rights are absolute.

The thing gun-rights fanatics don't want to face is that all the guns used in this violence started out the lawfully owned property of so-called responsible gun owners.

The fact is, so many gun owners are NOT responsible, that gun flow into the criminal world is profuse. Gun control laws could do something about that, but gun-rights maniacs, self-centered to the max, don't want that.

Adam Kokesh, a Fairfax County gun rights advocate, pleaded guilty Wednesday to various charges associated with an Independence Day incident in which he videotaped himself loading a shotgun in Freedom Plaza, just blocks from the White House.Kokesh, 31, was ordered released from the D.C. jail, where he has been for nearly four months , pending a January sentencing hearing.
Pending a Jan. 17 sentencing hearing, Broderick ordered Kokesh to stay out of the District and said he must report with supervising authorities weekly. The judge also ordered that Kokesh not possess any firearms. Kokesh faces a maximum of more than six years in prison on the combined charges.According to court records, Kokesh posted a video to YouTube showing him holding a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun and loading what appeared to be live shells while speaking into the camera July 4. Kokesh is then seen racking the slide of the shotgun.

Louis R. Panunzio, 83, who operates Panunzio’s Guns shop at his residence at 46559 Route 37, Hammond, was sanctioned Friday in U.S. District Court, Syracuse, but avoided any jail time that might have accompanied a June 3 guilty plea to making a false entry or representation with respect to information required for a firearms transaction by a licensed dealer. He could have faced up to a year in prison, but his attorney, Anthony M. Neddo, Watertown, argued in a sentencing memorandum filed with the court that a prison sentence would be unreasonable based on Mr. Panunzio’s age and lack of any previous criminal record.

According to court documents, an unidentified man came into Mr. Panunzio’s shop in March 2009 and inquired about buying a gun. The man filled out a form required by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives before the purchase, but based on the information included in the form, the purchase was denied by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System because the buyer was shown to be wanted in South Carolina on a fugitive warrant alleging that he passed bad checks and failed to appear to answer to a traffic offense.

Mr. Panunzio declined to sell the gun but allegedly told the man to “bring in somebody that can fill out the form to get it approved and they can sell the gun to you” and offered to hold the gun for the man.

As part of Mr. Panunzio’s plea in June, he agreed to surrender his federal firearms license which he had held for more than 40 years. At sentencing Friday, four counts against him contained in a grand jury indictment handed up in May 2012 were dismissed.This story made me realize how difficult it is to catch these guys. The article goes on to detail all the steps the government had to go through to prove Panunzio was guilty. It's not easy. Crooked FFL guys almost never get caught.The other thing I wondered is how many times might he have done this in the past. In his 40 year career of selling guns, how many times had he contributed to the criminal gun flow.

A controversial gun control measure that would propel this politically moderate -- and comparatively low-crime -- South Bay city to the forefront of what had been a stalled national movement to restrict firearms, had an insurmountable lead late Tuesday.

Measure C -- which requires gun owners to report a loss or theft of their weapon to police within 48 hours, to keep firearms locked up when not in the owner's direct possession and prohibits ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds -- received 66 percent support with all precincts counted, with 34 percent voting no. It was a resounding victory for Mayor Tony Spitaleri, who decided to push for the new law after last year's massacre in Newtown, Conn. The returns are unofficial with provisional and last-minute mail-in votes still to be counted.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

A South American woman has died in an apparent accidental shooting at a northeast Missouri gun range.

The Ralls County Sheriff's Department says the shooting happened Sunday at the Salt River Gun Range near New London. Authorities say 25-year-oldAndrea Jinneth Corredor-Rivera of Colombia died at the scene.

Corredor-Rivera died of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Ralls County Sheriff Gerry Dinwiddie tells WGEM-TV that the woman was shooting a .500-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun when the strength of the gun's recoil caused her to lose control. She was visiting family in the area.

The sheriff said the gun spun around in her hand, leading to a second fatal shot. No charges are expected in the case.

A Morehead City police officer will not face criminal charges after he accidentally shot a fellow officer during training.

During a training exercise on Oct. 2, Garrett Hardin, an officer in Morehead City was shot in the chest once by Marvin Willis. Willis, while he will not face criminal charges, has been terminated as a police officer and the negligent discharge of his weapon has been reported to the Criminal Justice Training and Standards Commission. Willis could face a negligence action in civil court.

That's not good enough. Losing the job but keeping the guns is completely ass-backwards.

Chicago Police Officer Gildardo Sierra will not face any criminal charges for the killing of an unarmed man, Cook County prosecutors announced Tuesday, despite video footage that showed Sierra standing over the victim, Flint Farmer, and shooting him multiple times. Prosecutors concluded that Sierra may have reasonably mistaken Farmer’s cell phone for a gun, and therefore was justified in firing off all 16 rounds in his gun at the unarmed man.

Farmer was Sierra’s third shooting in six months, yet the officer remained on the job. The video showed Farmer lying on the ground bleeding as Sierra shot three bullets into his back. An autopsy later determined those three shots in his back were the fatal wounds.

Sierra eventually admitted that he drank “multiple” beers before he went to work that night. However, the city waited more than five hours after the shooting to give him a breath test, so there was no way to tell if he was impaired during the shooting.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

How about that action for taking resources away from where they might be needed? TS feels that we couldn't require psychological screening for gun owners because it wound take the psychological services away from people who really need them. But, I suppose open carry stunts like this one are OK.

A gunman who opened fire at a New Jersey mall Monday night later holed up in a back room and shot himself in the head, authorities say.

No one else was injured in the mall shooting.
Richard Shoop's body was found at 3:20 a.m. Tuesday in an obscure part of Westfield Garden State Plaza mall, hours after he fired at least six bullets without striking anyone in the massive shopping center.

“I was living in fear. I wasn’t my own person. Someone else had control over me, over my life, over my thought process. Now I am free to think for myself. Free to advocate on any issue I want.” Maribeth D'Alauro said.The attorney for Richard D’Alauro's ex-wife said, “A man who has an order of protection against him ... is a poor spokesman for the NRA.” D’Alauro pleaded guilty to a noncriminal harassment charge Oct. 3 and will be able to resume gun ownership a year later.The Daily News

Credit card giant Visa’s affiliate program helps organizations market financial products to their members. But should Visa allow a lobby that fights every attempt to keep guns out of dangerous hands adopt its brand in pursuit of profit?

Purchases made with the National Rifle Association (NRA) Visa Card help fund “legislative action in support of…Second Amendment rights.” That means that Visa is helping to pay for NRA lobbyists who advocateagainst common-sense policies like background checks on gun buyers, and for dangerous legislation that would force K-12 schools, colleges, places of worship and businesses to allow the carrying of loaded guns on their premises.

On their website,1 Visa talks about “the importance of supporting the local communities and neighborhoods in which we all live and work.” But their credit card program is undermining this goal by funding lobbyists who are making our streets more dangerous.

Not only is the NRA’s agenda a threat to our safety, their leaders are politically extreme zealots who should be toxic to any company concerned about its public image. Visa’s brand and money are supporting an organization whose board members threaten violence against our elected officials,2 engage in racist rants about “the black problem,”3 compare homosexuality to polygamy and incest,4 and declare, “If a guy can’t rape his wife…who’s he gonna rape?”5

A Fortune 500 company should not be helping to promote and pay for an extreme, pro-gun agenda that is causing untold suffering in neighborhoods across America.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Voters in Sunnyvale, California will decide next week on a strict new gun control measure that has already set off both sides of the debate on gun laws in the United States. The ballot initiative, known as Measure C, would affect gun possession and ammunition sales. Gun owners would have to report firearm theft to the police within 48 hours, lock up guns at home, get rid of ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and provide a thumbprint when purchasing ammo. Gun dealers would also have to keep records of ammunition sales, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. “Our federal government can’t seem to set aside the (partisanship) and deal with this, so it’s got to start from the bottom up. Why not Sunnyvale?” Mayor Tony Spitaleri, 69, a retired Palo Alto fire captain, told the Chronicle. “Why not Mountain View next? We’ve got to start somewhere.” The NRA says it will sue if the Nov. 5 measure passes, claiming it overlaps with state laws and violates the Second Amendment.

Of course, it won't count for much until the rest of the state and country follow suit.

PolitixA new Gallup poll looked at the most popular reasons Americans own guns. Not particularly surprising, personal safety comes in first, with a whopping 60% of respondents citing that as their primary reason for keeping a firearm around.

But only one in twenty of those polled say they own a gun because, quite simply, the 2nd Amendment grants them the right. "Only 5% of American gun owners cite 'Second Amendment rights,'" writes Gallup, "despite its frequent use as an argument against gun control."

After personal safety, hunting is the most popular reason given, followed by "recreation and sport" and target shooting.

"Those who own firearms for protection may feel that their own personal safety is a vital need on which they do not wish to compromise," Gallup adds in conclusion. "This, rather than views on the Second Amendment, may explain why moving toward greater gun control as many Democrats have sought to do, is so difficult."

On Sunday, Nov. 3, at 9:26 a.m., the Ralls County Sheriff’s Department responded to a reported accidental shooting at the Salt River Gun Range.

The gun range is located on U.S. 61 in the New London rural section of Ralls County.

Upon arrival at the scene, sheriff’s deputes found the victim, Andrea Jinneth Corredor-Rivera, age 25, deceased from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head that appeared to be accidental in nature. However, the investigation was ongoing Sunday afternoon.

A man and his young daughter were both injured when the man’s handgun went off this morning in Stonington, police said.

The man, Ryan Matson, 38, was cleaning his .45 caliber handgun when it went off accidentally in his kitchen. He and his daughter, Riley Matson, were both shot in the leg and taken to Blue Hill Memorial Hospital. Police said the injuries were not life threatening.

Matson’s wife and another child were also at home, but were not injured.

Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said no charges are expected.

The Rogers County, Oklahoma Sheriff’s Department arrested three men after one of them was accidentally shot. Authorities are still searching for the gun used in the shooting.

According to Sheriff Scott Walton, the three men were hunting Bigfidth=580oot late Saturday night, when one of them was spooked by what he thought might be the legendary beast and fired his weapon, hitting his friend in the back.

Sheriff Walton said that while authorities cannot “locate the weapon that was used,” it “probably was an accidental shooting.” It is not yet known if drugs or alcohol played any part in the accident.

The combination of children and guns in the same household contributed to a steady rise in gunshot wounds and deaths in children, according to a review of national data over a 12-year period. The number of children hospitalized for gunshot wounds increased from 4,270 in 1997 to 7,730 in 2009. In-hospital deaths among pediatric gunshot patients increased from 317 to 503 over the same period. Among gunshot wounds with known incident locations, 40% of the wounds occurred in the child's home. The data showed a significant association between gunshot wounds to children and the presence of one or more guns in the household.

After months of inattention, Republican Ken Cuccinelli II and Democrat Terry McAuliffe have drawn the polarizing issue of guns into the spotlight of the Virginia governor’s race.For once, a Democrat is talking tough about gun control, as if daring the National Rifle Association to take him on. And gun-rights advocates are all too happy to take him up on the challenge.It began with the Oct. 24 candidate’s debate at Virginia Tech University, the site of the worst mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history. In response to a question, Cuccinelli boasted of his A rating from the NRA.
And then McAuliffe did something surprising: He said he didn’t give a fig about the powerful lobby’s rating. And, oh, by the way, he had earned an F.Differences over gun control between Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general, and McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, were not a secret before that debate. But Democrats rarely brag about their support for gun-control measures in statewide elections in pro-gun Virginia.McAuliffe’s change in strategy suggested a play for his liberal base — but also hinted that he felt comfortable changing the playbook in the still-evolving swing state of Virginia.

A person with a gun opened fire on Monday evening in a massive New Jersey shopping mall shortly before closing time, leading police to evacuate the mall and search for the shooter, but no injuries were reported, officials said.

The mayor of Paramus, New Jersey, where the Garden State Plaza mall is located, said that one shot had been confirmed. CNN, citing witnesses, reported that the shooter had fired at security cameras.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Index MundiThe value for Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) in Japan was 0.40 as of 2009. As the graph below shows, over the past 14 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 0.57 in 1998 and a minimum value of 0.40 in 2009.

Year

Value

1995

0.54

1996

0.49

1997

0.54

1998

0.57

1999

0.54

2000

0.51

2001

0.51

2002

0.48

2003

0.55

2004

0.55

2005

0.51

2006

0.49

2007

0.45

2008

0.51

2009

0.40

Dear Mr. TS, This is called a reverse correlation. Very few guns - very low murder rate.

“The weapon was a .223 MP-15, where the MP stands for military and police,” Feinstein said. “Clearly designed not for general consumption, but through practice now for general consumption—same gun that was used at Aurora.”

The New York TimesNearly three decades after becoming notorious as the subway rider who shot four teenagers on a Manhattan train, Bernard H. Goetz found himself back in the news on Saturday, after being charged with trying to sell marijuana to an undercover police officer. Mr. Goetz, 65, was arrested Friday evening after attempting to sell $30 worth of marijuana to the female officer, the police said. The officer approached him in Union Square and asked if he was selling, according to the police. Mr. Goetz said that he was, and went back to his apartment. When he returned, about 7:30 p.m., he was arrested. First of all, what the hell are the police wasting there time on small-time pot busts for? I can't believe they're still doing that.Secondly, what the hell is Goetz doing selling "nickel bags" of pot? Shouldn't he be doing public relations for the NRA or making personal appearances on right-wing talk shows?

Police said officers were called to a Walmart store parking lot on Main Street at 11 a.m. Saturday regarding a possible shooting.

Once there, police found a man with a gunshot wound to his back. Officers say the child — whose age wasn’t disclosed — was getting into the father’s pickup truck and tried to pull himself in by grabbing an unsecured shotgun. The firearm discharged and wounded the father in the back.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

North Carolina Republicans enacted the worst voter suppression laws in the nation this past summer. And because of that and the general extremism of the entire party, one House candidate has switched his allegiance from the GOP to the Democratic Party.

Here’s why Jason Thigpen, an NC house candidate and war veteran, renounced the GOP and joined the Democratic party.

War veteran Jason Thigpen had been a member of the Republican Party. He was even running for Congress on the GOP ticket in North Carolina. But no longer. The purple heart recipient officially renounced the GOP in a message on his website on Monday.

“I simply cannot stand with a Party where its most extreme element promote hate and division amongst people,” Thigpen explained. “Nothing about my platform has, nor will it change. The government shutdown was simply the straw that broke the camels back. I guess being an American just isn’t good enough anymore… I refuse to be part of an extremist movement in the GOP that only appears to thrive on fear and hate mongering of anyone and everyone who doesn’t walk their line.”

According to KTLA, in the days leading up to Friday’s LAX shooting, Ciancia sent a series of “angry, rambling” text messages to family members, including one to Ciancia’s younger brother that made Ciancia’s father think his son was suicidal. “Their younger child got a text message from Paul stating that there were some comments in there about his well-being and he wanted to possibly take his own life,” Chief Allen Cummings told reporters. Ciancia was apparently disgruntled about the Transportation Security Administration, saying in a note that they had violated his constitutional rights. He apparently referred to himself as a “pissed-off patriot.” According to HLNTV, Ciancia had material on him that expressed anti-government and anti-TSA sentiment. He also may have been a believer in The New World Order, generally considered a conspiracy theory in which a group of elites are thought to be forming a one-world government.

I blame Orlin Sellers and all the other arm-chair government haters who spout their poison continually which every once in a while motivates some deranged young man to act.

A North Florida jury on Thursday acquitted suspended Liberty County Sheriff Nick Finch of official misconduct and falsifying public records in a case that roiled gun-rights supporters and reached Gov. Rick Scott’s office.

Scott, who has been under fire from Second Amendment backers since he suspended Finch on June 4, quickly reinstated the sheriff Thursday afternoon.

The criminal charges and suspension came after a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation concluded that the sheriff released a local man, Floyd Eugene Parrish, who had been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, and that Finch destroyed or altered records of the arrest.

But a jury in the rural community west of Tallahassee reached a verdict within 90 minutes to acquit Finch, 51, who was engulfed with hugs and handshakes from family members and supporters who crowded the courtroom.

Nevertheless, the guy he released was a convicted felon arrested with a gun. The good sheriff said he wouldn't enforce laws against folks he deemed "good people just minding their own business." And somehow the paperwork conveniently disappeared.

The prosecutors suggested the reason for his actions was to repay a powerful local family for their support in getting him re-elected.

I'll put Sheriff Finch down as a minor entry on the list that includes O.J. Simpson and George Zimmerman.

A new study published in PLoS One and lead by Dr. Kerry O’Brien from the University of Manchester ties gun ownership and opposition to stricter gun control policies to symbolic racism in white Americans.

Symbolic racism, also considered “modern” racism, is described as a less blatant form of prejudice embraced through the approval of certain social policies designed to disadvantage blacks in the United States. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, this form of racism has replaced old fashioned hate like the approval of Jim Crow Laws with stringent conservative policies like the opposition to social safety nets such as welfare.

Often these policies are easily rationalized in the name of fiscal responsibility or rights (e.g. gun ownership). Individuals who hold symbolically racist beliefs can feel that they themselves are not racist, or even that racial prejudice no longer exists.

After accounting for income, age, location, political ideology, education and gender, researchers discovered that for each point increase in symbolic racism that support of gun-friendly policy increased significantly. For each one-point increase on the study’s five-point symbolic racism scale, the chance of owning a gun increased 50 percent. At the same time, support for concealed carry policy increased 28 percent in addition to a 27-percent increase in opposition to policy prohibiting handguns in households.

Let me be the first to say that "symbolic racism" is pretty funny. Surely they could have come up with a better term than that.

A Franklin pest control expert working in Maine is under investigation after he accidentally shot and killed a fellow worker.

Michael Warbin, 44, fired a single shot from a .22-caliber rifle that wounded and killed Manuel Adame, 57, on Aug. 19, according to a report from the Portland Press Herald.

The two men were in an egg house at a farm in Turner, Maine, a small town in southern Maine near Lewiston. The farm is owned by Moark LLC., one of the largest producers of eggs in the nation and a subsidiary of Land O’Lakes Inc.

Steve McCausland of the Maine Department of Public Safety said Warbin was shooting the rifle to kill rodents and stray chickens inside one of the farm’s egg houses.

McCausland said Adame collapsed while attempting to leave the barn and died as he was being taken to a Lewiston hospital.

The state medical examiner’s office said Adame died of a gunshot wound to the chest and neck.

Warbin on Tuesday referred all questions to his Portland, Maine, attorney, Jonathan Berry. Berry said Warbin is not and never was under arrest and is free to leave the state. He said he didn’t know whether Warbin had done so.Maine Deputy Attorney General William Stokes told the Press Herald last week that investigators believe the shooting was unintentional but want to know why Warbin apparently didn’t know Adame was in his field of fire.